Category Archives: Research

Conference deadlines for September and October

Here is the list of conferences, congress and fellowship deadlines for the months of September and October in the field of ophthalmology and vision science

Developing Country Eye Researcher Travel Fellowship program

Candidates in any of the following categories are eligible to apply:

• Researchers with an MD, PhD, OD or equivalent professional degree
• Trainees in one of the fields of interest below who are interested in pursuing a career as a researcher or clinician-scientist
• Graduate students, in an applicable scientific field, with an interest in a research career
• Can be interested in any area of eye and vision research, whether basic or clinical research, epidemiology, public health, infectious diseases, genetics or a particular subspecialty

DCERF recipients are eligible to have the following costs covered up to the maximum award amount:

• Round trip flight to the ARVO Annual Meeting, Hotel accommodation
• Meal stipend, Annual Meeting registration
• One year of ARVO membership and above all
• Support of an Annual Meeting mentor and the DCERF alumni community

Website: DCERF

Deadline: 31 October 2023

Venue: Happens at a different venue every year, 2024 meeting is in Seattle, Washington

ESCRS

ESCRS seeks to promote and support research in the field of intraocular lens implantation and refractive surgery and the dissemination of the useful results thereof. ESCRS has over 7,500 members from 130 countries worldwide.

The European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons evolved from the European Intraocular Implant Club which was established in 1981. The Society is administered by the ESCRS Board, a Board of Ophthalmologists elected by its members. The ESCRS staff based in London, UK, are responsible for the organisation of the Society’s day-to-day activities.

Abstract deadline 31 oct 2023

Meeting dates:15-18 feb 2024

Venue: Frankfurt, Germany

Website: ESCRS

VSS Program Cover and Website Banner Competition 2024

The Website Banner Competition is a contest to select an image that will serve as the brand, or theme, of the annual meeting by providing imagery that will be used throughout the VSS meeting. Although the winning image will be used for many purposes, to enter the competition you need to submit proposed images for the primary website banner and the secondary page website banner. Also, other items will be created using variations of the winning image.

Deadline to submit an image for Website Banner Competition: September 14, 2023
Website Banner Competition image results: by October 3, 2023

Website: VSS

World Ophthalmology Congress 2023

The World Ophthalmology Congress aims to strengthen the participants’ action and impact on national, regional and international scales through a multidisciplinary programme that features the integration of new technologies in the field of Ophthalmology.

World Ophthalmology Congress 2023 is scheduled in the most populous city, New York on October 09-11, 2023 and New York, being one of the centers for research, education, and science in USA, we will try to bring the maximum number of Directors, Optometrists, Ophthalmic surgeons, Retina and Retinal Surgery, Clinical researchers & Scientists, Public Health Professional, Glaucoma, Medical Practitioners, Professors, Deans, Students & Technicians, Medical & Health care Organizations & Associations, Researchers & Scholars, Diagnostic Instruments in Optometry to provide a better understanding of the field. So, come and join us in New York in October 2023.

Meeting dates: 9-11 Oct 2023

Abstract deadlines: 5th August 2023

Website: WOC

OMIG

OMIG stands for Ocular Microbiology and Immunology Group and the conference is conducted annually around the USA. Lastly, this year it is conducted at San Fransico.

Abstract deadline: 8 Sep 2023

Meeting dates: Friday, November 3, 2023

Venue: Marines’ Memorial Club & Hotel
609 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94102 and the meeting in Crystal Ballroom

Website: OMIG

Women in Vision

The Women in Vision UK 2023 Annual Meeting will take place on Tuesday 12th December at the Science Centre, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Additionally, we would like to invite abstract submissions for a wide range of presentation types. Abstracts are welcome from those who are early in their career, and those who are more established. Basic science, clinical research, teaching innovations, clinical case studies, etc. are all encouraged – anything vision-related that you would like to share!

Registration will open in October. WVUK members can register to attend for free. Nevertheless, membership is open to everyone who works in vision science, irrespective of gender or identity.

Abstract deadline: 9 October 2023

Meeting date: 12 December 2023

Website: Women in Vision

Augmenting Writing Skills for Articulating Research (AWSAR): 

AWSAR is an initiative that aims to disseminate Indian research stories among the masses in an easy-to-understand and interesting format to the common man.

Deadline: around October, not yet announced this year

Website: AWSAR

International CXL experts meeting:

The 18th International Experts’ CXL Meeting will remain in Zurich this year due to unforeseen political circumstances, also, to continue our tradition of hosting all of you, a special gala dinner is planned to be held in a private location on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich City Center.

Website: CXL

Abstracts application window: 19 July 2023 to 22 Sep 2023

Meeting venue: Mövenpick Zurich Airport Hotel

IASc-INSA-NASI Summer Research Fellowship

The three national Science Academies offer several two-month Summer Fellowships to enable students/teachers (studying/teaching in India) to work with scientists associated with the three Academies during 2023. At last, copy of the application format, instructions to applicants including eligibility criteria, and a list of names of scientists/faculty who have consented to guide students/teachers to work on short-term projects is displayed in the online application.

Application deadline: October, not announced yet

Program: Feb and March

Website: SRFP

Hopefully, this list makes it easier for you to prioritize deadlines and work efficiently. Further, let us know what else you expect from the blog, we would be happy to provide on the topics you are interested in.

For August deadlines click on this link: August deadlines

August deadlines

Hello people, here comes the list of conferences and awards in August

Asia Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology

A federation of national ophthalmic and regional subspecialty societies. Further, it is themed “Beyond All Limits,” the APAO 2024 Congress in Bali will bring together ophthalmologists from around the world. Also, It features about 800 internationally recognized speakers presenting their latest work and scientific innovations. Finally, an attendance figure of around 5000 delegates will attend every year at these conferences

Venue: Bali, Indonesia

Program dates: February 22 – 25, 2024

Abstract submission window: 14 April 2023 to 31 Aug 2023

Website: APAO

HOPE meeting

HOPE Meetings give opportunities to excellent graduate students selected from countries and areas in the Asia-Pacific and Africa region to engage in interdisciplinary discussions with Nobel Laureates. Further, the experience the students gain at the meeting will inspire and motivate them to become excellent scientists. Lastly, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) organises the meeting. Only INSPIRE Indian students are eligible from India.

Date: Monday, February 26 to Friday, March 1, 2024
*Registration: Sunday, February 25

Venue: Kyoto-city, Kyoto [tentative]

Nomination deadline: Around the last week of August or September

Participants: The participants will comprise about 20 PhD students and young researchers from the institutions in Japan In addition, 90 will be nominated by the Overseas Cooperating Institutions of the Asia-Pacific and Africa region

Website: HOPE

INSA medal for young scientists

The INSA Young Scientists Award is considered to be the highest recognition of promise, creativity and excellence in a young scientist. Also, It is made annually to those distinguished for these attributes as evidenced by their research work carried out in India. They recognized 925 young scientists till 2021. Many of them established rewarding scientific careers and continue to make outstanding contributions winning further honour

Eligibility: Any citizen of India who has not attained the age of 40 years on December 31, of the year preceding the year of award, shall be eligible for the award. Also, OCI/PIO card holders working in India for at least 5 years are eligible for nomination for this award.

Number of Awards: 40.

Value: Medal, a certificate and an honorarium of Rs. 1,00,000/-.

Nominations and Last Date: August/September each year.

Website: https://insaindia.res.in/old_website/aa4young1.php

Bug busters 4

This prestigious meeting brings together leading experts, researchers, and clinicians from around the world to exchange knowledge, present groundbreaking findings. Further, discusses cutting-edge strategies in the field of corneal infections.

Meeting dates: October 20-22, 2023

Deadline: 15 Aug 2023

Website: https://www.lvpei.org/events/2023/bug-buster-4/index.html

5th Annual Conference of Indian Neuro-Ophthalmology Society

The Indian Neuro-Ophthalmology Society (INOS) aims to provide an environment for knowledge sharing among researchers, healthcare practitioners and decision-makers interested in neuro-ophthalmology. The 5th Annual Conference of the INOS will be held on 9th-10th December 2023 at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad. The conference will also have presentations of original research and interesting cases in the form of posters, poster pods and oral presentations along with a session to showcase innovations in neuro-ophthalmology.

Venue: IIIT Hyderabad, Telangana

Website: INOS

Deadline: 15 Sep 2023

This is the month of children’s eye health and safety, go through this link for more information. Lastly, we hope this will make it easy for you to send abstracts and attend conferences on time.

Deadlines for June and July

Here is a list of important events, programs, conference and workshop deadlines for June and July. Unquestionably, we won’t let you miss any deadline.

World Ophthalmology Congress:

World Ophthalmology Congress 2023 is an international conference which encourages effective knowledge transfer and best practices among experts from around all the world. Besides, international community organises WOC 2023

The World Ophthalmology Congress aims to strengthen the participants’ action and impact on national, regional and international scales through a multidisciplinary programme that features the integration of new technologies in the field of Ophthalmology. Also, the organisers scheduled WOC in the most populous city, New York on October 09-11, 2023. New York, being one of the centres for research, education, and science in the USA, we will try to bring the maximum number of Directors, Optometrists, Ophthalmic surgeons, Retina and Retinal Surgery, Clinical researchers & Scientists, Public Health Professionals, Glaucoma, Medical Practitioners, Professors, Deans, Students & Technicians, Medical & Health care Organizations & Associations, Researchers & Scholars to provide a better understanding of the field.

Venue: New York in October 2023.

Abstract submission deadline: 10 June 2023

Website: https://suntextmeetings.com/ophthalmology/

Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowships

This Fellowship is designed for Indian scholars who are registered for a PhD at an Indian institution for six to nine months. Also, U.S. host institution affiliates with the applicant. Additionally, USIEF strongly recommends all applicants identify institutions with which they wish to affiliate and to correspond, in advance, with potential host institutions. If the applicant has secured a letter of invitation from a U.S. institution, s/he must include it as a part of the online application.

Website: Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowships

Application window: 8 Feb to 17 July 2023

CfAO summer school on adaptive optics:

Held on the beautiful University of California, Santa Cruz campus, this workshop provides professional instruction in the field of Adaptive Optics by speakers renowned for their contributions to this interdisciplinary field.  Infact, the summer school is appropriate for scientists, engineers, researchers, and technicians at the graduate level and above; this workshop combines lectures and hands-on, facilitated laboratory activities with working adaptive optics systems. Lastly, the venue is University of California, Santacruz.

Program dates: 14-18 August 2023

Deadline:31 July 2023

Website: CfAO summer school

IVI 4th International Optometry Conference

Program dates: 21-23 Sep 2023

Venue: IIT Madras, Research Park, Chennai

Website: International Optometry Conference

Deadline: Not yet announced

British Congress of Optometry and Vision Sciences 2023:

This conference will provide a forum for eye and vision researchers from across many disciplines and professions to meet and discuss their work, whilst promoting inclusion and accessibility as best as we can. Lastly, to note the abstract deadline is supposed to be in June and July. The dates are to be announced soon.

Program: Supposed to be in September

For deadlines of may, click on this link.

Deadlines in May for eye care professionals

Here is a list of important events, programs, conferences and workshop deadlines for May. Unquestionably, we won’t let you miss any deadline.

European Adoptive Optics Summer school

The programme includes live lectures that will be delivered via Zoom by experts from across the different applications of AO, as well as laboratory demonstrations, a simulation workshop and pre-recorded content highlighting the variety of research involving AO.  Also, there will be networking opportunities and (conditions permitting) even a demonstration from the VLT! Lastly, the school will teach the principles of AO to those new to the field, such as PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, and provide a basic background to users of the technology. Firstly Early bird : £75 (approx. 80€) Deadline is Monday 8th May 2023 and secondly, standard : £100 (approx. 120€) Deadline is Wednesday 31st May 2023. Also, there will be a small number of scholarships available to allow attendance free of charge. Consequently, if you would like to apply please justify your need for a scholarship (max. 200 words).

Website: https://aoschooleurope.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/4

Tiny beam fund

Tiny Beam Fund focuses on helping people understand things (i.e. letting a shaft of light into a dark space). Fund also wants this understanding to form the base and basis on which solutions are built (i.e. using the understanding as a supporting structure).

Two categories of awards are available:

Category 1: US$60,000 – for a single individual PhD-holder or a team of up to four individuals with a PhD-holder as the lead/PI.

Category 2: US$45,000 – for a single individual PhD student close to completion of PhD or a team of up to four individuals with a PhD student as the lead/PI

Application window: April 6 to June 8, 2023

Website: https://tinybeamfund.org/

American Academy of Optometry:

The American Academy of Optometry presents four days of quality enrichment and education at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. In addition, the event will feature workshops, a robust lineup of lectures, popular ACE courses, Section and SIG Symposia, and scientific program papers and posters. Additionally, the academy is accredited by COPE to provide continuing education to optometrists.

Venue: New Orleans, Louisiana, October 11-14, 2023

Abstract submission deadline:  May 31st, 2023, 5:00 PM ET

Website: https://aaopt.org/meetings/annual-meeting/

BRICS Young Scientist Forum:

The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) in partnership with the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) invites you to submit applications to participate in the 2023 8^th BRICS Young Scientist Forum. Further, North West Province, South Africa is holding the forum from 31 July – 2 August 2023 

Deadline:  Thursday, 25 May 2023.

Venue: North-West Province, South Africa

For deadlines in April: April

Telangana Ophthalmological Society:

Website:https://tsos.co.in/toscon-2023/

Venue: CITADEL hotel and convention center, Shamshabad, Gaganpahad, Telangana

Deadline for abstract submission: May 20

Conference days: 7-9 July 2023

How do you know if a scientific article is reliable?

Every topic that you search for has thousands of research articles. Although the internet had made it easy to search for every article we need, it also made it difficult by giving thousands of options for a single topic. The scientific reliability of the article becomes a question mark. We can’t review a thousand articles for one topic, it is practically impossible. Somehow we need to reduce it to 20-25 articles. These are some rules I realised in the long run from my reading experience to select the articles.

• Identifying the name of the journal:
  • First and the most important thing is identifying the name of the journal. Do not ever fall into the trap of predatory journals. Predatory journals are the journals which accept the publication with article processing fees and author charges and do not consider evaluating the content by peer-reviewing. Nowadays these journals also send requests personally on LinkedIn and g-mail for manuscript submissions. Hence a big NO to all articles of the predatory journals.
• Is it a peer-reviewed journal?
  • Peer reviewing is a very important part of publishing. This shows how well you can defend the research you have done and how well the scientific community apart from your research group accepts your ideas. Sometimes, having gone through peer reviewing adds unique perspectives to the manuscript and makes it more robust. Hence check the journal’s website, if it mentioned peer review.
• Impact factor:
  • Clarivate calculates the impact factor every year. It reflects the yearly mean number of citations that the journal receives for the last two years’ publications. Observing the trend of impact factors across years of a journal shows whether the quality of publications accepted by the particular journal is reducing or improving.
• Pub-med indexed:
  • If you are in a medical or paramedical field one easy way is to check if the journal is pub-med indexed. There are chances that if a publishing company is starting a new journal it might not have impact factors for the first few years since it takes some time to get noticed by the people. Pub-med indexed journals are more trustworthy than the non-indexed or no impact factor journals. But this principle applies only to the medical and paramedical subjects.
• Evidence-based pyramid:
  • Evidence based pyramid in medicine has the review articles and meta-analyses at the top with the highest valued content. As you go below the pyramid the scientific level of evidence becomes less relevant and unfiltered. Hence it is wise to start any literature review with the review articles.
• Check the author’s name:
  • Research the author’s experience in the field and see if they have multiple publications in a similar field. Experienced research authors or publications in collaboration with experienced research authors yield better scientific content.
• Publisher name:
  • Since there are some well-established publishers in the past few decades already, the articles from those publishers can be easily trusted without any doubt.
• Technicalities of the paper:
  • There are some technical details or factors that help you to understand the reliability of the publication. For example, Does the sample chosen for the study represent the population or is there any sampling bias? Is the methodology appropriate for the particular disease? Does the conclusion drawn from their results appropriate? Or the authors are biased toward any one side of the story? Do they have any financial interests? These thoughts will make you think about the credibility of the article.
• Number of citations:
  • Various people working in the same field often cite the articles of high significance . If the article has multiple citations, that represents the science in the article was useful to open up many answers and perspectives in the field. Any article that has been published recently will not have citations, since it has been in the journal for a very short period. Hence also correlate the year of publications along with the number of citations.
• Year of the publication:
  • Sometimes in the medical field, when you read about the treatment or diagnosis of a disease in a paper that was published 20 years ago and compare it with the treatment of current times, there would be a lot of difference. Hence it is always important that you keep the year of publication in mind to realise the importance of that particular evidence.

Once you select the articles for review, you will need to know how to read a research article?

http://optometryzone.com/2022/03/24/how-to-read-a-research-article/

All the above tips are not hard and fast rules. Take all these tips with a pinch of salt. They can be different in rare case scenarios. These only represent the maximum percentage of good publication characteristics. There is no single indicator that says that we can trust one journal or publisher or an author. I hope to keep in mind all the above tips you might get to some sort of conclusion, also I completely worked on medical and paramedical scientific research. Hence these tips are from a point of personal perspective.

Do you have more specific tips on how to narrow it down further? Let me know in the comments section.

How to read a research article?

Before starting to read a research article, decide what is the purpose for your read. Is it because you are interested in understanding a particular subject in-depth? or because you wanted to pursue the project in that field?

If you want an answer to a particular question, just select any recent review article and understand the conclusions well. If you want for literature search, so that you can pursue your future projects in that field, then follow the below steps.

Deciding a journal:

Make a list of journals in your subject with impact factors and whether they are PubMed indexed. Due to the rampant increase in the numbers of predatory journals, we need to be very cautious about the source. Do not read or trust any information or research article from predatory journals.

Start with review articles: 

For a person who is a newbie to research, I would suggest reading review articles, because they are the compilation summaries of multiple articles. Also, they contain very less mathematical numbers. Hence it will be easy for the brain to comprehend it as a story. Even if you are not a newbie, sometimes if you feel there’s any difficult concept, going back and searching for a review article is always a good option.

Highlighting/Making notes: 

Start highlighting with a marker (either on-screen or paper). Because, once you start reading a complex article, authors use multiple analogies, explanations to make complex concepts into simple concepts. But the important idea of the project lies mainly in one sentence that explains the purpose and another sentence that explains the methodology. If you do not underline/highlight there are high chances that you forget the main purpose before engrossing completely into the methodology. Additionally,  If you are patient enough, you can even make notes of the articles.

Non-understandable bits prevent us from following the main ideas: 

A variety of specialists are needed to pursue a single subject of research. For example, if you are studying about one part of the eye cornea, you might require engineers to build machines to image cornea, you might require doctors to assess the images, you might require data analysts to understand how to convert these images into valuable information. Once all these people collaborate and publish an article, it is not so easy for a doctor or an engineer to completely understand all three components of the research.

Hence it is okay to ignore non-understandable bits of the paper and concentrate on information that is of your interest. Any published article is a result of years of work in that particular field by a group of scientists. It is natural, of it takes multiple reads to understand in detail. Hence, take it easy on yourself and give time for multiple reads.

Contact the authors:

Once you really think there is something in the paper that you especially need to understand to do further research, you can always ask the author. You will be doing them a favour by letting them know that it’s complex for a person like you. They also feel happy to know someone is really interested in learning their area of interest. 

The authors tend to assume significant background knowledge from readers. It is not wrong on their part since, if a person is really interested in that topic, they will definitely learn all the basics and then come to research articles.  Also, since every journal has a word limit, authors have to explain their research concisely. Hence understanding an article depends on how much interest the reader has to learn that particle subject.

Our recent article on Best ways to keep you updated with eye and vision research (part 2)-Research alerts

Order of a research article:

The simplest way to understand an article is to read in the order it is presented by the journal. Most of the journals follow similar templates. Skimming the abstract should get you clear whether the article is of any use to your area of interest. Once you feel it is related, you start reading the introduction, methodology, results, discussion and conclusion. Sometimes if you don’t understand even the purpose of the article, it is always wise to start with a discussion. Authors use simple words in discussion with fewer numerical values and also extrapolate the specific results of the project into the practical applications and implications. Also, looking at the graphs and images gives a simple idea of the main results.

All the information above is from personal experience and from the below references. Open to any other simples ways of reading a research article. Comment your suggestions below.

References:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3687192/
• https://towardsdatascience.com/guide-to-reading-academic-research-papers-c69c21619de6
• https://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~cainproj/courses/HowToReadSciArticle.pdf

Best ways to keep you updated with eye and vision research (part 2)-Research alerts

Eye and vision research is a vast area that requires exploring the research in journals from time to time to keep updated. Hence, the following article gives you information about subscription links and research alerts for various journals in optometry, ophthalmology and vision research.

If you are interested in subscribing to the following journals, Please find the attached links, open, put your emails and enjoy research alerts from the journals.

1. Acta Ophthalmologica: Subscribe
2. American Journal of Ophthalmology: Susbscribe
3. Annual reviews of Vision science: Subscribe
4. Bristish Medical Journals: Subscribe
5. Cornea: Subscribe (scroll down, then, click on get alert for research alerts)

Want to read another article? Internship diaries -to dilate or not?

Interested in research alerts of best ways to keep you updated – part 1?

6.Current opinions in Ophthalmology: Subscribe

7.Journals in Karger publishers: Subscribe

8.Grafe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology: Subscribe

9.Indian Journal of Ophthalmology: Subscribe

10. Journal of Cataract and Refractive surgery: Subscribe

11. Journal of Refractive Surgery: Subscribe

12. JAMA Ophthalmology: Subscribe

13. Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery: Subscribe

14. Ophthalmology: Subscribe

15. Optometry and Vision Science: Subscribe, Click on get alerts, now enter your email id.

16. Retina: Subscribe

17. The New England Journal of Medicine: Subscribe

18. The Asia Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology: Subscribe

In fact, once you subscribe to the above journals, you will have a good time enjoying articles on emails every day

At last, Extra tip for research enthusiasts:

NCBI is a website that provides biomedical and genomic information. Simultaneously, it also conducts regular workshops for free. Hence, you can click on this website link and check regularly for events. If you are interested in any topic, you can register and attend later.

Do you know any more links for subscriptions/research alerts? comment below for me